The present invention relates generally to surgical instruments and more particularly to surgical instruments that engage body tissue by means of applied vacuum, such as suction stabilizers and suction retractors employed in coronary artery bypass surgery.
In order to avoid the risks and difficulties associated with cardiopulmonary bypass, various procedures for performing coronary artery bypass on the beating heart have been developed. Several of these procedures employ devices which stabilize a desired anastomosis site by means of suction pods placed on either side of the anastomosis site and devices which hold the heart in a desired position by means of a larger suction pod, typically placed on or near the apex of the heart. Devices of the first type are referred to herein as “suction stabilizers”. Devices of the second type are referred to herein as “suction retractors”. It is common for procedures to be performed using one of each type of device.
In procedures where both a suction stabilizer and a suction retractor are employed, it is conventional to attach each of the devices to a vacuum source through a separate vacuum regulator and associated canister. While both the stabilizer and the retractor could be coupled to a single vacuum regulator, this is not typically done because a loss of vacuum attachment by one device could readily trigger a loss of vacuum attachment by the other device. The consequences of this loss of attachment would be particularly severe in the context of the suction retractor. However, as sudden detachment of either type of device is undesirable, physicians have typically employed separate vacuum regulators, canisters and vacuum lines for each suction device, in spite of the fact that this results in significant additional equipment being present in the operating room and additional complexity in equipment set-up, as compared to the use of a single vacuum regulator.